Wednesday, November 7, 2007 - 4:35 PM
489d

A Novel Approach to Ultrasensitive Detection of Disease Marker Using Protein Nanoparticles

Hyewon Lee, Sung-Hyun Lee, Jin-Seung Park, and Jeewon Lee. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Korea University, Anam-Dong 5-1, Seoul, South Korea

We report on the ultrasensitive protein nanoprobe system that specifically captures disease marker (autoantibodies of Type I diabetes in this case) with attomolar sensitivity. The system relies on supramolecular protein nanoparticles that bind the early marker of Type I diabetes. The ultrasensitive detection of early marker of Type I diabetes during the early phase of pancreatic â-cell destruction is important because individuals at high risk of developing Type I diabetes can be identified several years before the clinical onset of the ailment. The bacterial expression of chimera genes encoding N-[human ferritin heavy chain (hFTN-H)]::[specific antigenic epitope]-C produces supramolecular nanoparticles with uniform diameters (10-15 nm), owing to self-assembly activity of hFTN-H. Each nanoparticle is subjected to carrying a large number of epitopes with a homogeneous and stable conformation per autoantibody binding, thereby allowing substantial enhancement of sensitivity. The sensitivity was finally boosted to 3 attomolar concentration of the autoantibodies, 4-9 orders of magnitude more sensitive than conventional immunoassays. Also, this ultrasensitive protein nanoprobe successfully detected natural autoantibodies in the sera from Type I diabetic patients. The attomolar sensitivity was successfully reproduced upon the detection of other antibodies, i.e. monoclonal antibodies against hepatitis B surface antigen. With the two protein markers above, the feasibility of simultaneous and multiplexing-mode detection was also demonstrated.